The present invention concerns a friendly and evolutionary device for assisting air traffic controllers and able to evolve towards a fully automated system. It concerns also a process made use in this device.
The air traffic systems function is to prevent collisions and insure a safe and efficient air traffic flow. Presently, the decisions and the responsibility of safety rely exclusively on the air traffic controllers.
Each team controls a predetermined part of the airspace, called control sector. This team is composed of a Radar controller and an assistant more specifically in charge of strategy and coordination with the adjacent sectors.
The role of the computers is presently limited to acquire, correlate, elaborate and automatically display to the controllers, in appropriated format and time, the data concerning the present positions (Radar) and the flight intends (flight plan) of each individual aircraft.
The computers do not compute systematically the relative positions of the pairs of aircraft and, a fortiori, their collision probability, excepting for provoking an ultimate alarm in case of an imminent collision danger (safety net).
The perceptive, cognitive and mnemonic capabilities of the controllers are limiting the quantity and accuracy of the data that, in real time, they can effectively acquire, remember and submit to mental computation, namely for assessing the relative present and future relative positions of the aircraft as taken two by two.
Taking in account the fuzziness in which they operate, the controllers are forced to take important margins in they evaluations; therefore they retain numerous pairs of aircraft <<problems>> and proceed to a permanent survey of the evolution of the situation, which requires time and attention, for insuring as time elapses, that they doesn't turn into effective <<conflicts>> requiring a collision avoidance action. They are led to consider permanently the overall traffic as a whole; therefore, they elaborate an overall strategy and a tactics progressively adapted to the evolution of the situation and to they workload.
The saturation in the capacity of the system therefore results from the partial use of fuzzy data leading to an imperfect use of the available airspace and to a real-time overloading of the controllers.
A computer, supposed to be programmed for making full use of all the available data and of its computing capabilities for achieving the task presently devoted to the controllers, would not encounter such limitations. It would build a strategy, a tactic and decisions radically different from those of the controllers. This disparity of perception and appraisal of the situation and of its evolution would conduct to an irreducible source of incommunicability and misunderstanding between the controllers and a so programmed computer. In the same way, the controllers would not have the necessary time available for interrogating step by step such a computer for enriching or refining their appreciation of the present situation and of its evolution, for testing a solution or for having some optimizing computations made at their request.
Lastly, in the present state of the art and of the techniques, such a computer ignoring the cognitive thought process and the intentions of the controllers would not be in a position for assisting them in the appropriate form and moment, and would, on the contrary, take the risk to perturb in an inappropriate way the course of their thinking. A proposal for a given action made at a given moment by the computer would have no probability to fit harmoniously the strategy as elaborated by the concerned controller, the said strategy being ignored by the computer; such proposals would be considered as non-understandable or ill-advised.
For these reasons, and in the present state of the techniques, there exists no device permitting to a computer to assist the controllers in real time for elaborating their decisions, the said controllers staying the only masters of organizing their task, of elaborating their strategy and the only judge and responsible of their decisions and of safety.
For obvious reasons, the decisions and the responsibility in a given airspace can only be unique and cannot be shared between a controller and a computer without leading to dangerous situations.
For all these reasons, all the attempts for introducing a computer in the controllers' decision processes have led to a failure or to disappointing results. Inversely, it is not conceivable to include a controller into an automatic loop, the finality and the process of which would escape to their understanding.
Thus, the system, as it presently exists, has not significantly been improved since many years; it therefore cannot benefit neither of all the quantity and accuracy of the available data, nor of the computing capabilities of the computers for forecasting, survey and resolution of the potential conflicts of the aircraft as taken two by two. The situation is thus blocked despite the fact that the system operates with powerful computers for performing the limited functions which they can presently be devoted.
For overcoming the above obstacles which are opposing the communicability between a controller and a computer for exercising the controlling functions, it could be envisaged to directly proceed to a complete automation of the system. In theory, such a radical venture could be envisaged since it is becoming possible to equip the aircraft with navigational and command computers and with automatic air/ground and air/air communication links. In theory, it could even be envisaged to give up the centralized ground control for delegating this function to the network of the airborne computers communicating two by two. A third way, sometimes suggested, is to render the system deterministic, and therefore able to be planned, by taking full benefit of the aircraft's navigation accuracy and flexibility under computer control.
All these potentialities are however staying at the state of theoretical debates. Actually, the effective implementation of such automated systems would have to face at least two insurmountable obstacles: on the one hand, all the aircraft would have to be simultaneously specifically equipped on D Day and, on the other hand, the overall system of such an extreme complexity would have to be beforehand tested and certified in a real environment in facing all the hazards they could encounter.
Faced to the unrealism of a complete automation or to the possibility of a cooperation between computers and controllers, it results from the present state of the techniques that, not only a partial benefit can only be made of all the presently available data and means, but also the new means able to provide radically enriched data (precise satellite navigation, on board computers, air/ground and air/air automatic data-links) are staying unusable for improving air traffic control, even if some aircraft are already so equipped and if some more could be equipped if this could effectively be beneficial to air traffic control.
Taking account of the saturation of the air traffic control system and of the costs of the resulting delays, the airlines would be willing to make the effort of equipping their fleet, if they were convinced that the system could be accordingly and immediately improved.